Apple-based Dishes and Desserts

Apple pie

If you travel to the southern part of Transylvania, a region where you can find Saxon fortified villages and churches, and if you have a closer look at the dishes included in the menus of restaurants and guesthouses, you will discover dishes typical of the Saxon food culture. The Saxons were a population of ethnic Germans who settled in Transylvania a thousand years ago, bringing with them the traditions of their country of origin, including their culinary habits. Potatoes, beef and pork make the staple ingredients for many dishes. Specifically, some of the Transylvanian Saxon dishes include noodles, pie dough, meat and smoked bacon.

Saxon cuisine also boasts several dishes that for most Romanians are quite unusual. Among them, the apple soup. For the apple soup, you need 8 or 10 sour apples, 2 tbsp. of flour, 2 tbsp. of sugar and 100 milliliters of sour cream. You can also add a bit of cinnamon. Peel and core the apples, then cut them into small cubes. Let them boil in two liters of water together with the sugar and a bit of salt for about a quarter of an hour. Take the apples out, mash them and put them back into the pot. Separately, prepare a mix of yolk, flour and sour cream, and add it to the mashed apples to boil. Leave to cook over low heat, stirring to homogenize. Add a little bit of white wine at the end. This soup is best served cold.

And since we are talking about apples and about recipes that are typical of former Austrian Empire regions, here is also a Romanian recipe for the apple strudel, a dish as tasty as it is simple. It is a great recipe to try for those of us who are beginners in making pastry and desserts.

You need the following ingredients: for the dough – 400 g of wheat flour, salt, and two tablespoons of honey. For the filling – 600 g of apples, 100 g of shelled walnuts, 150 g of white sugar, two teaspoons of ground cinnamon, a bit of vanilla essence, 50 g of raisins, and icing sugar to sprinkle on at the end.

Make a simple dough from the flour, honey, water and salt, and let it rest for half an hour.

In that time, grate the apples and put them in a larger cooking pot, together with the sugar, cinnamon and vanilla essence. Set the mixture to cook on medium low heat, and keep it there until the sugar dissolves and most of the juice evaporates. Meanwhile, roast lightly the walnuts in the oven. After cooling, remove the skin, which now should come off easily. Crush them lightly into smaller pieces, then put them in the apple filling together with the raisins.

Separately, roll out the dough into a sheet about two mm thick, and lay on it the filling. Roll into a spiral, tuck the edges of the roll under to seal the roll, and lay on a buttered baking tray. Bake for about 35 or 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Once it is out of the oven, dust with icing sugar if you wish. Enjoy!